Mike Oldfield

Mike Oldfield
Oldfield at the Night of the Proms in 2006
Background information
Birth name	Michael Gordon Oldfield
Born	(1953-05-15) 15 May 1953 (age 71) Reading, Berkshire, England
Genres	Progressive rock world folk classical ambient new-age pop experimental minimalist
Occupations	Musician songwriter record producer video game designer
Instruments	Guitar bass keyboards percussion vocals
Years active	1967–2023
Labels	Virgin Epic Reprise/Warner Bros. Mercury/Virgin EMI/Universal
Formerly of	The Sallyangie
Spouses	Diana Fuller ​ ​ (m. 1978; div. 1978)​ Sally Cooper ​ ​ (m. 1979; div. 1986)​ Fanny Vandekerckhove ​ ​ (m. 2002; div. 2013)​
Website	mikeoldfieldofficial.com

Michael Gordon Oldfield (born 15 May 1953) is an English retired musician, songwriter and producer best known for his debut studio album Tubular Bells (1973), which became an unexpected critical and commercial success. Though primarily a guitarist, Oldfield played a range of instruments, which included keyboards and percussion, as well as vocals. He had adopted a range of musical styles throughout his career, including progressive rock, world, folk, classical, electronic, ambient and new age music.

Oldfield took up the guitar at age ten and left school in his teens to embark on a music career. From 1967 to 1970, he and his sister Sally Oldfield were a folk duo, the Sallyangie, after which he performed with Kevin Ayers. In 1971, Oldfield started work on Tubular Bells which caught the attention of Richard Branson, who agreed to release it on his new label, Virgin Records. Its opening was used in the horror film The Exorcist and the album went on to sell over 2.7 million copies in the UK. Oldfield followed it with Hergest Ridge (1974), Ommadawn (1975) and Incantations (1978), all of which feature longform and mostly instrumental pieces.

In the late 1970s, Oldfield began to tour and release more commercial and song-based music, beginning with Platinum (1979), QE2 (1980) and Five Miles Out (1982). His most successful album of this period was Crises (1983), which features the worldwide hit single "Moonlight Shadow" with vocalist Maggie Reilly. After signing with WEA in the early 1990s, Oldfield's most significant album of the decade was Tubular Bells II (1992) and he experimented with virtual reality and gaming content with his MusicVR project. In 2012, he performed at the opening ceremony for the 2012 Olympic Games held in London. Oldfield's discography includes 26 studio albums, nine of which have reached the UK top ten. His final album, Return to Ommadawn, was released in 2017. Oldfield's label announced his retirement in 2023.^[1]